NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Intel Corp. said Thursday that first-quarter sales would come in lower than originally expected, which could spark worries that business spending on technology may not be picking up as quickly as Wall Street had hoped.

The world's largest maker of semiconductors said first-quarter sales should be between $8 billion and $8.2 billion, compared with its January forecast of $7.9 billion to $8.5 billion.

The mid-point of Intel's new forecast is $8.1 billion, below Wall Street's consensus estimate for sales of $8.3 billion.

Its stock sank about 1.5 percent in after-hours trading on the news.

The company posted sales of $8.7 billion in the fourth quarter. But sales typically fall from the fourth to the first quarter as consumer demand for personal computers tails off after the holiday shopping season. Corporations usually tend to hold back on spending as well after year end.

Intel said it was seeing demand that is "consistent with the lower end of normal seasonal patterns."

During a conference call, Intel chief financial officer Andy Bryant said sales from Asia and Japan were a little less than expected in the first weeks of the first quarter.

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Sales should be significantly higher than the first quarter of last year, however, when the recovery in the economy and the tech sector was still fragile. If Intel hits the $8.1 billion mid-point of its new guidance, that would be a 20 percent increase from a year earlier.

The company reaffirmed its gross margin target of about 60 percent for the quarter. Intel does not give earnings targets.

Analysts expect Intel to report earnings of 28 cents a share in the first quarter, double the 14 cents a share a year earlier. It is due to report first-quarter results in mid-April.

Shares of Intel (INTC: Research, Estimates), a Dow component, gained 2.1 percent in regular trading on Nasdaq Thursday. The stock more than doubled last year but has fallen about 7 percent so far this year.

Bryant said during the call that Intel did not expect a massive PC or server upgrade cycle to take place on the corporate side during the year. He added that it was too early to tell whether the economy would kick into another level by the second or third quarter. His conservative comments were similar to those made by Intel president Paul Otellini in January.

The disappointing sales outlook could fuel further declines in the stock, but Krishna Shankar, an analyst with JMP Securities, said Intel tends to be overly cautious in its mid-quarter outlooks. He added that investors should not overreact to what appears to be a typical seasonal downturn.

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"Corporate IT spending tends to be quite slow in the beginning of the year," Shankar said. "March could be a strong month so it was prudent for Intel to lower guidance."

David Wu, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, agreed that the report was nothing to get "overly panicky about." He pointed out that even though demand for PCs appears to be improving, the PC market remains one of the weaker areas of technology.

Wu said that he expects Texas Instruments (TXN: Research, Estimates), another large chipmaker, to boost its first-quarter sales guidance when it gives its own mid-quarter update Monday afternoon. TI , the biggest supplier of chips for cell phones, should benefit from continued strength in the wireless market, analysts said.

Shares of TI barely moved in after-hours trading.

But other chip stocks, including Linear Technology (LLTC: Research, Estimates), National Semiconductor (NSM: Research, Estimates), and Maxim Integrated Products (MXIM: Research, Estimates), dipped on the Intel news.

Intel arch rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD: Research, Estimates) fell more than 1.5 percent.

Shankar owns shares of Intel but his firm has no banking relationship with the company. Wu does not own shares of Intel and his firm does not do banking for the company.